County supervisor wants to regulate humanoid robots

BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
A San Mateo County supervisor wants to regulate humanoid robots that can do tasks typically carried out by human workers.

Supervisor Ray Mueller said he got the idea after discussing the impacts of AI on the workforce and hearing in the news about humanoid robots being used in Asia.

“They’re on their way here,” he said in an interview yesterday.
On the county’s Emergency Services Council, Mueller said he’s seen the impacts of “thermal runaway” battery fires, which continue to heat and require specialized firefighting equipment.

“The deployment of untethered, autonomous or semi-autonomous humanoid robots in commercial environments, such as restaurants and retail stores, introduces novel public safety and health challenges,” Mueller said in a proposal that will go to the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.

Mueller said humanoid robots can be unpredictable, interfere with evacuations and take service jobs away — requiring the county to provide more social services with less of a tax base.

Mueller wants County Executive Mike Callagy to create a permitting process for humanoid robots, with a focus on health and safety, fire preparedness and economic impacts.

Mueller said permit fees could be used to buy specialized firefighting equipment, and he wants to know if robots cause layoffs.

Applicants for a robot permit would have to show their robots meet ADA and sanitation standards, have emergency kill switches and have no active recalls or patterns of catastrophic failure, Mueller said in his proposal.

Permitted robots should be supervised at all times by a trained, on-site human, Mueller said.

Mueller said he expects the state or federal government to eventually regulate humanoid robots, like the state does with electric vehicles. But he said San Mateo County should be a leader and show that permitting fees are justified, so the burden for firefighting equipment doesn’t fall on local taxpayers.

“Innovation and regulation go hand in hand,” Mueller said in an interview.